Elizabeth Bear
30 Quotations from Elizabeth Bear
| android n. | 2020 Machine iii. 34 Then it spoke, in stilted but correct Standard, in a smoky contrived alto that made me flinch. ‘I am Helen,’ the android said. ‘The distress signal—yes. There is a distress signal. And there are casualties. Please, come with me.’ |
| antigravity adj. | 2020 Machine x. 146 Rilriltok perched on my shoulder—its personal antigravity device seemed to be working, as it weighed less than my exo—and let me carry it through the crowd, safely raised above the bustle. |
| beanstalk n. | 2005 Worldwired 181 Forward Orbital Platform’s larger and brighter than Clarke—newer, and the interior is designed in bright cheerful colors, mostly cobalts and sunshine yellows that remind me of a children’s hospital. The air isn’t as good as the Montreal’s, but it’s warm and doesn’t smell canned, which is more than I can say for the shuttle. I especially like the way the overhead clearances are vaulted and painted different shades of blue to give the illusion of texture and depth. It’s almost like not being in a tin can eighteen hours by beanstalk above the surface of the Earth. |
| datapad n. | 2020 Machine xviii. 293 I couldn’t even ask my own patients what was wrong except by typing and machine translating on a datapad—hilarious—so we communicated mostly by them shoving the affected area under my nose, and me spraying a biologically appropriate sealant over the wound. |
| groundlubber n. | 2020 Machine i. 12 And Hhayazh, in particular, is the sort of twiggy, bristle-covered, black-carapaced insectoid sentience that gives groundlubbers the shrieking jimjams. |
| home sun n. | 2011 Grail 21 Obligingly, the Angel—who was not present as an avatar, but was listening, as was her duty—popped up a crudely surveyed, low-resolution globe. Grail was second out from its home sun. It had a secondary, like Earth—and like Earth, it was the larger twin—but the smaller planet didn’t appear in this simulation. |
| hubward adv. | 2020 Machine xvi. 255 Her crew all had our quarters nearby. The Ox Cryo unit was a few dozen meters along the same ring. The cafeteria was a few levels hubward. |
| humanoid adj. | 2020 Machine ii. 31 The lattice furled itself up like a series of stage curtains being drawn open, and we found ourselves face-to-facelessness with a humanoid form like a shaped bubble of inexplicably golden mercury. |
| insectoid adj. | 2020 Machine i. 12 And Hhayazh, in particular, is the sort of twiggy, bristle-covered, black-carapaced insectoid sentience that gives groundlubbers the shrieking jimjams. |
| jump point n. | 2020 Machine xxv. 407 We copied them, and by integrating them into the self-replicating tinkertoy machine’s code, we made one big enough to, er, distort space-time and slide Big Rock Candy Mountain close enough to a white space jump point that somebody could plausibly stumble across her. |
| mag- prefix | 2020 Machine i. 7 Our mag boots latched onto the hull, and suddenly we were standing comfortably under about a third of a g. |
| non-human adj. | 2020 Machine i. 9 You probably wouldn’t be surprised by how often people—even modern rightminded people, even nonhuman people—fail to do what’s sensible. |
| sapience n. | 2020 Machine x. 140 They’re built to feel because, as far as anyone can tell, emotion is a critical part of cognition, and trying to build A-life without it never results in emergent sapience. |
| sentient n. | 2020 Machine xxvi. 424 AIs were Synizens of the galaxy. But they were born into debt and owing decans [sic] of service to pay for their own construction—an obligation we don’t ask any other sentient to assume. |
| shipmind n. | 2020 Machine i. 5 ‘Sally,’ I asked my faceplate, ‘how’s our telemetry?’ ‘Pretty good, Llyn,’ the shipmind answered. ‘We’ve matched velocity and vector, and we’re stable. Can’t do much about that spin.’ Ibid. 11 Most of the generation ships had shipminds of a sort. |
| space ark n. | 2020 Machine ii. 29 People who fled the Eschaton in their primitive space arks did so because they believed that anybody who stayed behind would die, along with the rest of humanity. |
| space flight n. | 2020 Machine iii. 39 And believe me, if there is anything centian-long [sic] space flights are good for, it’s gossip. |
| space-pale adj. | 2009 Mongoose in R. Horton Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2010 427 Her skin was space-pale and faintly reddened across the cheeks, as if the IR filters on a suit hadn’t quite protected her. |
| space-suited adj. | 2020 Machine i. 9 The space was large enough for six space-suited humans—or two humans and a large piece of equipment—and utterly barren. |
| space travel n. | 2020 Machine viii. 111 One thing about space travel: even when you’re in a hurry, it takes a long time to get where you’re going, because everything is extremely far away. |
| Standard n. | 2020 Machine iii. 34 Then it spoke, in stilted but correct Standard, in a smoky contrived alto that made me flinch. |
| starbase n. | 2005 Hammered 76 Contemplating that, Feynman wondered if there might be some way into Unitek through the servers hosting the VR game. Vast, quick, powerful—and maintained by Unitek I.S., although they were outside of the company firewall. And he was going to need to hack Phobos starbase anyway, and get a player character online there, so he could maintain contact with Leah—once she started her virtual pilot training. |
| suit n. | 2020 Machine v. 81 That meant I needed to don not just my standard hardsuit, but a heavy-duty, thermally protective suit that did not radiate any heat whatsoever. |
| superpower n. | 2020 Machine vi. 85 So weird to think that a lot of people have superpowers all the time and don’t even know it. |
| Terra n. | 2020 Machine xxi. 347 Christ was a religious prophet from an even earlier era, very popular on Terra for several thousand years. |
| three vee n. | 2020 Machine vi. 91 Even ridden by my guest ayatanas, I was the one in control—whatever you might have seen on your late-night three-vee. Reality is seldom as melodramatic as entertainment. |
| tight-beam n. | 2020 Machine v. 80 There was a snap of connection. No crackle of old-fashioned static this time. Sally had given me a tightbeam laser cluster. |
| tight-beam v. | 2020 Machine x. 144 We’d tightbeamed ahead to let her know what we had coming, so I wasn’t surprised when she said, ‘Welcome home, Sally, Doctors, Nurses, Pilot. Welcome to Core General, Helen. Helen, I’m Linden, the wheelmind here, and I will be in charge of making sure that you are comfortable while my staff begins care for your crew.’ |
| viewplate n. | 2020 Machine xxix. 462 The hardsuit sealed over my face, obscuring my vision for a moment. For another moment, I could see clearly as the utility fog formed into the transparent viewplate. Until a sudden concussion knocked it askew, and red-black tunnel edges closed on me. |
| viewscreen n. | 2020 Machine ii. 18 Large dark viewscreens covered the arcing wall in front of us, and two rows of consoles and chairs curved around a single central command chair. |